John Ibbitson

John Ibbitson

Jornalista do The Globe & Mail, Ottawa Jornalist of The Globe & Mail, Ottawa

ix years ago, Darrell Bricker, who is the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, a global polling firm, and I decided that we would examine one of the most commonly held assumptions of our time. That assumption is that the Earth’s human population is exploding, that the population boom is one of the great challenges of our century, affecting the environment, our food supply, global security, and that addressing the population growth is one of the most urgent tasks. However, we were aware that there is a group of dissident demographers who were questioning the population projections of the United Nations Population Division, and we wanted to see to what extent there was validity in those objections.

We went into six continents over two years, talking to demographers, statisticians and academics, but talking mostly to young people, especially to young women, asking them what their plans were, and what they intended to do in the future. We talked to university students of the Seoul National University, we talked to aid workers in the favelas in São Paulo, we talked to people in Nairobi, to slum dwellers in New Delhi, to millennials in a dinner party in Brussels. And we came to the conclusion that the demographers are

Sright. The UN Population Division is wrong in projecting that the population of the Earth would grow from seven billion today to over eleven billion in the end of the century. In fact, the Earth’s population is going to stabilize, and then start to decline, somewhere around nine billion people, somewhere in the middle of the century. It will be the very first time, in human history, that the population of the Earth will deliberately go into decline. And the decline that has started will not stop for the foreseeable future, and by the foreseeable future, I mean for the rest of the century. So why do we believe this? The most important reason can be summarized in a single word: urbanization. This planet is urbanizing at an incredible rate, there are now more people living in cities than living in rural environments around the world, and that process is accelerating. As a population in a given community urbanizes, four things happen: 1) The first is that a child ceases to become an economic asset and becomes an economic liability. In a rural environment, a child might actually be a source of income - another pair of hands to work in the fields. In the city, the child simply becomes another mouth to feed, so there is an expense involved in having children in the city and couples reasonably decide to limit that expense.

2) A second and equally important thing happens when people move into the city. Women acquire access to formal education systems that they might not have in rural environments, they have access to mass media, the internet. When women move into urban environments, they begin to demand things, they become empowered.

They demand that they have legal rights, a right to vote, access to jobs that traditionally were reserved for men, to have control over their own bodies. And as soon as women have control over their own bodies, everywhere in the world without exception, they choose to have fewer children.

3) A third thing that happens is the decline of the power of religion. In a rural environment, religion is a powerful force and, traditionally, religions emphasize the subordination of women to men. Moving to the city, the power of religion decreases. For example, we looked at the Philippines where the Roman Catholic Church is in a tremendous crisis because of declining church attendance. At the same time, the fertility rate of the Philippines is plummeting.

4) The same thing is true for the power of the clan. In a rural environment, family is very important, urging young people to get married, settle down and have children, but when they move to the city, the power of the family declines, the power of the clan declines, the power of co-workers and peers increases and those do not urge colleagues to have a baby.

So, urbanization leads to an economic impetus, an educational impetus, the decline of religion, and the decline of the clan, all of which combines to produce a decline in fertility.

In developed societies, in countries such as Canada, it took about a century and a half before fertility rates reached 2.1. At 2.1 children per woman, on average, society has a stable population; if it is more than 2.1, the population grows; if it is lower than 2.1 the population begins to decline. Throughout the developed world, the fertility rate is below 2.1, often far below 2.1. Last year, Canada had an official fertility rate of 1.6, typical of a Western country. In 2019, Canada reduced it to 1.5 and in 2020 it has fallen to 1.4. So this is happening in developed

societies around the world, but the big news is it is happening in developing societies around the world as well. This is where the United Nations is getting it wrong. It is failing to take into account the acceleration of urbanization in developing countries, of the empowerment of women in developing countries, and of the decline in fertility in developing countries. For example, North America, South America, the Caribbean are now at a replacement rate of 2.1. India has reached a replacement rate of 2.1. China is at 1.5 and probably falling. The Chinese will lose between a third and a half of their population over the course of this century.

So that is why we think that the planet's population is not going to reach eleven billion, it’s only going to reach about nine billion, perhaps even as little as eight billion and then it is going to start to decline. When it starts to decline there will be huge consequences, some good, some bad.

It will be the very first time, in human history, that the population of the Earth will deliberately go into decline.

Environmentally, there is nothing but good news. It will be a big boost in the effort to control global warming to have fewer people on the planet: it will ease the strain on the oceans, on the food supply, and as people move from rural to urban environments, subprime farmland goes back to the bush which increases biodiversity and acts as a carbon sink.

On the economic front, there is nothing but bad news. It is very difficult to maintain economic growth with a declining population because every year there are fewer people born who then become workers who pay the taxes that support older people, their pensions, their health care needs, there are fewer labourers able to fill the needs of the economy. Our economies are built on consumption: if there are fewer people every year, especially fewer young people every year (because young people consume the most), then there is a great problem trying to boost economic growth, which is already happening in countries like Japan, even arguably the European Union where growth is low and populations are steadily beginning to decline.

Geopolitically, it is going to be very interesting. As I said, we think about China as a country that is set to dominate this century, but they’re going to have huge problems trying to manage an economy that is beset by rapid population decline. India is in a very good place, its population is going to be stable, will eventually decline, but it will have a large young population. Africa is the last place on Earth where population fertility rates are very high, but we spent time in Kenya, and we noticed all the pressures were underway in Kenya to lower fertility rates. Kenya was mandating that both girls and boys receive education through elementary and secondary levels. In 2019, for the first time, as many girls as boys sat the grade eight graduation exam in Kenya. Of course, the girls did better on average than the boys. So we believe that there is a great reason to hope too that, although fertility rates are still high in Africa, they are going to come down more rapidly than the UN predicts, because of the growing empowerment and rights of women in Africa.

So, nothing but good news on the environmental front, nothing but bad news on the economic front, and the mixed bag on the geopolitical front. The only thing I would add is that we can’t know what will happen far down the road. We can’t know whether in two or three generations people will be tired of only having one baby, and will decide to have larger families; we can’t know the exact impact on the economy, on the environment, on global security, and on migrations, as a result of steadily declining population. All we can say is that the population is going to steadily decline around the world throughout the course of the century. It is not a good thing or a bad thing, it is however a very big thing and it is time that we confront it.